The Objective
by GhostEnvy
Summary: Maddie and Jack Fenton are the source of the life changing accident that forever altered the life of a dear friend. Were they really so clueless to the extent of the damage on Vlad Masters, or were they secretly very well aware? Could it be that they had other plans that relate to the accident of their own son years after the incident so eerily similar?
1. The Accident

**I was originally going to make this just a one shot, but die to It's length I'm dividing it into a two shot. **

Maddie rubbbed her gloved hand over her chin feverently. Beads of sweat were just beginning to form along her neatly trimmed eye brows, the sweat moistenig her fair skin. Her pale violet eyes scanned the machine with perfect precision. She double checked every wire, nut, bolt and screw. Her curly hair hung at her shoulder matted and unkept. Her eyes swept over the minature device propped up atop the laboratory blacktop table. Her eyes lingering over the beauiful piece of machinery that her and her colleagues had worked on for several laborious, nerve-racking months. After many failures and moments where she came dangerously close to throwing in her towel and giving in to the impossibility of it all, she finally felt_ that_ _t__his was it. _She could feel it in every fiber of her being.

Her hands traveled up the sides of device, starting at the stand slowly trailing her nimble fingers up the side. Her palm pressed up against every crevace, every inch of the device before her. Out of the corner of her eye she saw him. Her dearest friend, that she had begun to think of as something more, was gazing at her as he leaned against the wall on the opposing side of the laboratory.

"Do you think it'll actually work this time, Vlad?" The redhead questioned, just barely above a whisper. She still clung on to that little bit of hope inside her that all their hard work was finally about to pay off, but she wanted to hear that Vlad, who she trusted dearly, thought the same. She just needed to here his conformation so she would know whether or not to allow herself to get her hopes up. His deep blue eyes bore into her own. He nodded, the corner of his lips curved into a gentle smile, "There is no doubt in my mind, Madeline."

For whatever reason no matter how confident she felt about the experiment she just couldn't voice her excitement. It was as if something within herself was trying to hint _that she was wrong._

She brushed off that feeling of doubt quickly, feeling soothed by Vlad's words.

_Everything will go smoothly today, Maddie..._ She thought to herself.

She returned her attention to her beloved piece of machinery. It was carefully crafted to form a perfect circle, exactly twelve inches in diameter on all sides. The stand gave it an extra inch or two so it stood just below eye level from it's position on the table. She stared at the glorious portal as if it were about to combust never to be seen again, but she only chuckled under her breath at the ridiculousness. The damned thing wasn't even plugged in yet.

She heard a soft, familiar chuckle from behind her. "Oh Madeline, It'll work. Trust me" Vlad comforted when on the inside he was feeling just as nervous and skeptical as she was.

She turned around to face him and pulled out a stool tucked beneath the table and plopped down. She rested her elbow against the table and lent her chin onto her palm. A strand of hair fell into her face, just brushing against the corner of her eye. "What if it blows up in our faces like all the rest?"

"Then we rebuild it" he said simply.

She opened her mouth to object, to explain how maybe the portal never worked because there was no such thing as a Ghost Zone in the first place, but it was at that exact moment that the door decided to swing open at full force. A very large man with brought shoulder stepped into the room. He had a very friendly face, but his normally easygoing demeanor was replaced by one of focus and concentration. He had a clipboard held tightly to his chest with an inch thick wide bunch of papers clasped to it. His eyes traveled across the room landing on the faces of his dear friends, his gaze lingering slightly too long on Maddie's beautiful face before his gaze finally fell upon the Ghost Portal she was perched in front of.

He quickly crossed the room taking heavy steps, his eyes lit up with both his eagerness and nervousness at todays events. _Today was the day. _

He dropped his clipboard on the table, thumbing through the countless sheets of paper giving them a quick once over before beginning the experiment. He then bent down and picked up the plug, his eyes scanning the room for a free outlet.

"I have a good feeling about this one" he announced as his eyes fell on a nearby outlet and shifted over in front of it. His hands clenched around the thin wire trembled with his internal mixture of anticipation and excitement. Beneath his thick, black rubber gloves his knuckles had begun to turn white. Maddie picked up the clipboard, and there on the first page something caught her eye. Her pale violet eyes narrowed at the formulas scribbled down across the page, suddenly her eyes widened as she picked up on the error. The fatal error.

"Jack...I don't thi-"

But it was too late. She was too late. Jack jammed the plug into the outlet with one fluent motion. The electricity pulsed through the wire immediately and traveled through the great length until it finally reached the portal. For the briefest of seconds nothing happened and Maddie's breath hitched in her throat. The look in her eyes was no longer filled with her earlier excitement but showed only fear instead. _Today was not the day after all. _

The portal hummed to life, the bulbs all lit up at once, the wires all pulsed with electricity in perfect synchronization. Yes, the portal itself had been built perfectly, but that one tiny little unfixable error would be it's Achilles heel.

The center of the portal began to ripple with green energy, slowly growing brighter until the entire thing was covered in a green misty swirling of pure energy. Maddie as well as her fellow scientists gaped at the portal.

"I can't believe this" Vlad said, the wonder clearly evident in his voice.

He inched his way across the laboratory floor, coming to a stop just mere inches in front of the portal. His eyes were impossibly wide as he watched the continuous mist swirl around and around again.

Maddie couldn't believe her eyes. _Where her eyes playing tricks on her?_

Her eyes continuously scanned over the formulas. Was she the one at fault here?

No. According to these calculations the portal should have combusted into nothing. But here it was...fully functional. Or was it. According to these calculations it shouldn't be too stable. Actually, it was more of a ticking time bomb than a functional portal.

"Vlad" She warned. "I wouldn't get too close."

He didn't seem to even realize anyone had even spoken to him.

"V-Man. Listen to Maddie."

"We've done it." Vlad whispered in complete awe. He extended his arm, ever so slightly grazed his hand along the rim. His thumb just barely grazed the inside of the portals rim getting sucked into the thick, misty, sickly green substance. smoke tinted a unattural deep shade of green errupted from the portal. Vlad withdrew his hand immediately, cradling ot against his chest.

Maddie clapped her hand over her mouth at the sight of the portal shaking, rattling and bellowing smoke.

Maddie turned away from the smoking portal keeling over in order to protect herself from the inevitable explosion. Her heart beat so fast, she could feel it thumping wildly against her rub cage, hear it pounding obnoxiously in her ears.

The force of the blast was powerful enough to knock her off her feet. She scrambled across the floor desperate to get more distance between herself and the blasted portal. She sat with her back flush against the wall, crushing her knees into her chest. She glanced around the room, but her vision was to blurred to make anything out.

She rubbed her balled up fists over her eyes, blinking rapidly until she could just barely begin to make out the shapes of the room and it's contents.

Vlad was on his knees several feet in front of me. He was clawing at his own face wildly, a blood curdling scream surpassing his lips.

She gasped as he suddenly lifted up his head, his shoulders rigid and ever so slowly turned to face her. It was the most repulsive sight she had ever seen.


	2. Ecto-Acne

**Still not exactly sure how long this story will be. Let's just see how it goes for now. Also I realized that I made many ridiculous typos last chapter so I was more careful while editing this one... **

-Six months after the accident-

Maddie descended the steps to the basement holding a thin clipboard withholding the documentation of all data collected on Vlad's condition since the accident. He had been administered to the hospital a total of six times when he became too unstable for them to handle, only then to be brought back under their care once again. The hospital staff were not trained in the field of Ghost Induced Illnesses. The only logical option was to keep him under their care for the time being.

Jack's basement was filled with pointless household clutter and no matter how many times Maddy asked Jack to clear it, he would just make excuses for why he needed everything in there. Not only was there useless clutter, but also all their little gadgets that were _supposed _to function as ghost trackers. Sadly not one of them worked Farther than simply turning on and off. If only they knew that years in the future that very basement would become the basis of all their work. Their very own laboratory better than anything they had access to through their college, better than anything they could have dreamed of.

In the center of the basement was advanced medical machinery. All the necessities like a heart monitor, an x-ray machine and other things to monitor Vlad's condition and track any and all progress to his recovery. The sickening lumps on his skin, her and Jack had appropriately given the name of 'Ecto-Acne', had remained consistent from present time all the way back until the accident. As far as they knew, it posed no threat to the mans life, but they still thrived to find a cure, even though they currently had not even a single lead.

Maddie sat in the little plush chair beside the bed Vlad lay unconscious in. Her heart clenched painfully in her chest at the sight of his battered form, and ghostly blemished skin. Maddie turned her attention away from the man to focused on the paperwork on her lap instead of the physically broken form beside her and flipped mindlessly through the countless sheets of paper at all the documentation. She flipped through Vlad's "Medical History" with the utmost interest. The first month in from the accident Vlad had finally regained, to an extent, consciousness, but faded in and out only able to mutter incoherent words.A week from the date he officially awoken, he was able to recognize jack and herself and she removed his IV in favor of feeding him solid foods now that he was fully conscious. His memory stemmed as far as the date of the accident and beyond, but the accident itself...he had no recollection of the disaster that landed him here in the first place.

The disease had many curious effects beside the initial acne that dotted the flesh. Since the accident Vlad's heart had drastically slowed. His once steady 90 beats/min heart rate dropped down to a deadly 60 beats/min. The first time Maddie had tried to hook Vlad up to the heart monitor, the second the machine had taken it's first reading it had gone crazy in seconds. When Maddie had checked the results she had been positive that the monitor was malfunctioning.

At 60 beats/min every cell in his body would begin to die at the lack of oxygen, but he somehow managed.

That wasn't even the most frightening she recalled, as surprising as that might be. In about the second month, when she had come in to bring him his breakfast she had discovered Vlad floating almost a full two inches above his mattress.

If that wasn't strange enough, that same day she had entered the lab that afternoon and discovered that he had fallen onto the floor. Only he lay directly beneath his bed, looking completely unphased by it. The hospital bed was lifted 5 inches above the floor, so Vlad was visible, yet wasn't cramped and uncomfortable. Perplexed by this, she had run up the steps into the main part of the house and checked the video footage only to see the man phase through the bed.

She had conversed with Jack about these oddities who was just as perplexed as she was. As far as they knew, before the accidents Vlad had none of these strange abilities. Could it be that the explosion of the portal, that initial exposure to the ectoplasm, that caused this?

Maddie tapped the pen that she had been holding lightly on her chin._ What if the ectoplasm had entered his bloodstream? _

In the next instant Maddie stood up, grabbed a single syringe out of a small medical supply drawer. She inspected the needle closely before rolling up the sleeve of Vlad's shirt. She tied a band around his arm to momentarily stop the flow of blood into his arm so that when the needle entered his vein, his blood wouldn't spurt out after she drew the needle.

She angled her syring above his arm and allowed the needle to just barely graze his skin. She gently plunged the needle into his flesh just over a vein. A small flow of blood trickled inside of the syringe, she could feel the warmth of the liquid through the syringe in her palm. She disconnected the tube with the blood sample and threw the needle away in the trash, then held the sample up into the light. She felt her eyes widen dramatically as the deep red liquid had small specs of some green substance mixed in. Her fingers trembled slightly. The only conclusion her mind could muster was that the substance had to be ectoplasm.

The blood sample in her hands was extraordinary, but how was it possible? Maddie scribbled her findings down in her notes. She had never laid eyes on a ghost and knew little to nothing about their anatomy. Vlad's exposure to the ectoplasm had changed him in ways that were unimaginable. What if, somehow, his human DNA had been altered by ghost DNA delivered through the portal?

She flipped back to that initial first page where Jack had scribbled down his works for the portal; the formulas, sketches, prototype plans and what not. At first glance on that fateful night she had thought that his calculations were completely off, which they were, but maybe not as off as she had originally thought.

The portal had not been stable, but it was fully functional which was a major step forward in comparison to their past portal experiments that always ended with major destruction and shattered hope. But this last time, the portal worked for that glorious one minute and a quarter. Maybe if she worked back into the formulas she would be able to unlock the key to all of this. To perfect them so our portal was not only functional, but stable as well.

Then it occurred to her that maybe their work could be expanded. What happened to Vlad when the portal had exploded in his face. would it be possible to execute the experiment with another subject and transfer ghost powers to a human, minus the ecto-acne?

Her skin crawled as the image flooded back into her mind. Vlad on his knees while she cowered in the corner. She had been so helpless that day, unable to help her friend.

She looked back down to the blood sample still centered on her palm. With a sigh she stood up crossing a room to a small machine to the right of the hospital bed. She discarded the needle in the waist bin and proceeded to hook up the vile to the machine. She pressed the on switch, and the machine hummed to life.

The soft hum disrupted Vlad from his sleep as he began to stir. Maddie allowed a small gentle smile to pass her lips. She sat down at the chair once more and watched as Vlad began to gradually come to.

His eyelids fluttered open to reveal his deep, dark,murky blue eyes. He groggily turned his head to face the girl that he had come to love. For the briefest of moments he had forgotten all that had happened, even his current state. It was as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders until the memories flooded heavy into his mind like a heavy sack of bricks. He sighed heavily.

Maddie tugged at her glove, pulling one off to reveal her long, slim fingers. She reached her hand out to gently stroke the side of Vlad's head comfortingly.

He lolled his head into her palm, from her angle she could get a clear view of the bags under his sullen eyes and the way the corners of his eyes crinkled. She placed her clipboard on his lap amd waited patiently for him to thumb through her most recent findings. She had shared everything with him, after all this was his health, and the fact that he was also a very inteligable genius much like herself.

"Ectoplasm in my blood?" He questioned his eyes widening at the notes in front of him.

"I think that may be what's causing your abilities."


	3. Gone

**Hey guys. Sorry about the lack if updates lately. I am now working a full time job and barely have time to sot down and write anymore, and then when I do...writers block. I guess the writers block can be blamed on not being completely sure where I'm going with this story. **

Maddie left Vlad in favor of moving back up into the security of the upstairs, above ground portion of Jack's home. She entered into the kitchen where Jack was sitting at the small, hard wood table hard at work. Her eyebrows pushed together as she eyed the familiar piece of technology in front of him.

"What are you working on, Jack?" She inquired curiously.

"The Fenton Ghost Finder," he replied proudly. He unraveled his stubby fingers from around the screwdriver he had previously been using and allowed it to roll off his palm onto the table. He raised his arm to wipe off a few beads of sweat that had collected on his forehead.

Maddie couldn't help but to chuckle to herself lightly. "Our very first invention?" She was rather puzzled that he was even wasting his time on something that probably would never work, much like all the others.

"I just thought that maybe because we got our portal to work...even if it blew up, then maybe we could fix up all our ghost hunting gear," he continued.

Maddie just watched as Jack continued to work on the tracker. Got to admire that positive attitude, she thought to herself.

She sat down across from the man, crossed her slim legs beneath the table and folded her hands neatly in front of her. Her thoughts drifted back to her earlier conversation with Vlad. She gnawed at her bottom lip as she felt a pang of guilt for not being entirely honest with him. She had convinced him that the effects of the accident were more sever and puzzling than she had led on.

His breaths were short and ragged. His skin was like ice, cool to the touch. His heart did not beat with a normal consistency and did not beat as often as it should. He was like a living, breathing, walking corpse.

"What do you suppose actually happened to Vlad when the portal blew?" Jack's abrupt question startled Maddie out of her thoughts. "I don't think you're being completely honest with him."

Maddie shifted slightly in her seat, inhaling deeply. "I don't want to frighten him," she said sorrowfully. "But if you must know, I don't believe it was as simple as a few alterations in his DNA, maybe after, but not initially. Jack, he died."

The small device that Jack had previously been working on had slipped out from his grasp. It landed with a loud thud on the table causing Maddie to visibly flinch.

"What do you mean? How is that even possible?"

"I don't know. I don't even understand how he's alive now." Maddie's face was grim as she spoke. "His body just doesn't function normally, not anymore."

Jack sat idly in his place, his fingers fumbling with the head of the screwdriver. "So what does that mean for him?"

"It means he never fully recovered."

Before Jack could say anything more, the ghost tracker in front of him hummed to life, beeping and flashing frantically. His eyes leveled with Maddie's, mirroring her amazement. Without hesitation he lifted up the tracker, he tapped a few keys prompting the machine to show what all the beeping about.

_"Large sums of ectoplasm detected. Ghost approximately fifteen feet away. Thank you for using the Fenton Ghost Finder."_

"Fifteen feet away?" Maddie mimicked the automated message. "That would mean it's inside the house." Her voice wavered. She couldn't tell if it was from fear or the sheer shock of it all.

Her colleague jumped into action, toppling over the wooden chair in his roughness. "Ghosts DO exist," he yelled as he scuffled across the kitchen floor and down into the basement. Maddie was quick to follow.

Jack turned the corner fully entering the basement a millisecond before she did. Once he was out of her sight, the sudden silence that followed, the absence of footsteps scared her. She rounded the corner, her heart racing and breathing quick, only to run right smack into something big. She stumbled a few steps backwards, recovering enough to recognize what ,rather who, she had ran into. Jack.

She raised up the balls of her feet to position herself on her toes to angle herself to be able to see over the mans shoulder.

What she saw scared her to no end. A man, no ghost, stood in the middle of the basement with his back flush against the heart monitor, seemingly using it just to support his own weight.

The ghosts skin was a powder blue. His lips were pulled back into a grimace, exposing two sharp fangs, his jet black hair was styled to form two points almost like devils horns. He looked like a creature of evil. He wore a white suit, he looked like he was just barely holding himself up.

Her eyes immediately went to the her right where Vlad's bed would be, only to find the bed empty and the sheets disheveled. Her glare on the the ghost turned icy, accusatory. "What did you do with him?"

The ghost, for the first time, acknowledged her presence. He lifted his head to look in her direction. Recognition flashed in his eyes. The look on his face sent a chill down Maddie's spine. There was something oddly familiar about this ghost, but one look in his piercing, but confused, red eyes wiped away any remnants of familiarity.

Maddie lunged forward and kicked one of the lab tables so it slid across the floor, pinning the Ghost between it and the heart monitor. The ghost yelled, but phased right threw the heart monitor. Once he had uncovered his hands from his face, surprised had appeared on his face.

Then Jack jumped into action as if on que. He punched the ghost in the face, and as he stumbled back Jack grabbed him by the collar lifting him off the ground. "Where. Is. Vlad" he ground out between clenched teeth.

The ghost's mouth moved, but deemed unable to form words. His fists charged witha fiery green, pushed against Jack's chest. The force of the blast sent them both flying to the opposite sides of the room.

After the ghost's back slammed into the wall, he had stared at his own hands in wonder, before his gaze fell on the large man he had blasted in horror. Maddie ran across the room and slid on her knees coming to a halt beside her colleague. She pulled him into her embrace, her eyes returning to the ectoplasmic being across the room. The ghost pushed off the ground and disappeared. Gone from view never to be seen again.


End file.
